Justice is served: 3 up and 3 down ...

THREE UP …

1. No one expected the Red Sox to remain idle this offseason, and the Sox didn’t. Looking up at the Yankees, the Red Sox needed to fortify their rotation, so they went out and signed free agent John Lackey. With Lackey, Jon Lester and Josh Beckett, the Red Sox have the strongest one-two-three punch in baseball.

2. What am I missing here? Everywhere I hear people talk about history and the importance of the Colts and the Saints going 16-0. But the only history worth making will come in February. Win the Super Bowl, and that’s the history that matters. Nothing else does.

3. Jake, Jake, Jake! Can you believe Washington quarterback Jake Locker, a surefire No. 1 pick, decided to stay in college instead of going into the NFL draft and collecting millions? Locker will hear people second-guess his decision, but he realized what others didn’t: He’s having a ball in college, so why give it up just yet?

THREE DOWN …

1. Call it the Tiger Woods effect, but advertising experts are wondering aloud if companies will ever again pour millions into having a celebrity’s name on their products. Image is everything; it always has been. A tarnished image has little value to marketers and corporate giants. A good-guy image can unravel quickly when infidelity, thuggish behavior or drug abuse attaches itself to an athlete’s persona.

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Will Yankees buy another title? Some say yes ...

I met Ted, a venture capitalist and an Obama supporter long before I found a seat on the bandwagon, in Argentina early last year. Ted was taking his wife, his son and his daughter on a whirlwind tour around the world. They were seeing sites that would stay with a lifetime.

Part of their purpose was to take baseball to the unschooled. Every place he and his family went they left their love of the game there for others to share. Ted’s a Red Sox fan, unabashedly. So if you see a boy in Chile or South Africa in a Red Sox cap, blame Ted.

He loves baseball the way I do, and he infused that love of the game into his son Gibson, whom I watched play against a group of Argentine youngsters on a well-groomed ballfield in Buenos Aires.

I’m not trying to revisit the adventure in South America, although it's certainly worth sharing with people. I’m only mentioning Ted and his son now because of an e-mail he sent me the other day.

“He and I made it to Game 3 of the Red Sox-Angels series, and got to see our beloved Sox disintegrate in the ninth inning to get swept,” Ted wrote of he and Gibson. “And we thought about you all playoffs since Cleveland’s former players were so successful.”

Did you have to remind me, Ted?

I can’t dispute the role of formers Indians. I mean, how much better were manager Charlie Manuel’s Phillies after picking up left-hander Cliff Lee, a Cy Young winner, in a midseason trade? And the Yankees signed the best free-agent pitcher available last offseason when CC Sabathia joined them in a $161 million deal.

And where did Sabathia, a Cy Young winner, build his reputation?

In an Indians uniform, of course.

Even Ted’s beloved Red Sox had a high-profile Indian in catcher Victor Martinez, a linchpin in their journey into the postseason.

Ted was less concerned about the past than he was about next season. He looked into baseball's future and didn’t like what he saw. Not that he begrudged the Yankees and their success, because he didn’t.

What Ted lamented was the system that allowed New York to build the best team money can buy. With revenue streams from a new ballpark, the Yankees should become stronger this offseason as they jettison old pieces and add new ones, a point not lost on Ted.

“Some of the reporters stupidly argued that the Yankees’ World Series win wasn’t about the money, since they failed to win in the past when they made really bad signings,” Ted said. “That’s about as weak an argument as you can get.

“Take away Sabathia, (A.J.) Burnett, and (Mark) Teixeira, and the Yankees might not have made the playoffs again.”

He was right, despite what some sportswriters have claimed. The Yankees are a store-bought team, using the financial wherewithal at their disposal to outbid any team for a player they want.

I have long ago moved past decrying how the Yankees organization builds successful teams. It’s not the Steinbrenner family’s fault that it was blessed with a cash cow, and the family is willing to spend that cash to succeed.

That’s what seems to frustrate Ted and a legion of baseball fans elsewhere. It seems unfair to let deep revenue streams, not astute talent evaluation, decide which teams will be the most successful.

“Baseball sorely needs to revise its system, since the Yankees will now go out and buy two or three more All Star/future HOF players to get even better next year,” Ted lamented.

He’s right here, too. The Yankee dynasty is back, more prepared than ever to spend money and to bludgeon the competition into submission.

And what can anybody do about it?

Absolutely nothing.

Shut loophole on international free agents

Baseball is a crazy game. Or, some might argue, a stupid one.

I often find myself leaning toward the latter category. For stupidity is the only thing I can point to for why baseball officials refuse to seal a loophole as big as Alex Rodriguez’s ego.

This time the issue is talent, not the inequity in market profitability, though profits, I suspect, do weigh heavily in this situation as well. At the center of it, as with most things in baseball, is money, which Aroldis Chapman stands to make a pile of.

Who is Aroldis Chapman?

Unless you know baseball well, the 21-year-old Chapman isn’t on your Fantasy League radar. But for those unfamiliar with him, they should file his name away, because he’s a ballplayer who should someday be making headlines in the Majors. He’s the latest defector from Cuba, a country with a deep pool of baseball players.

Now, Chapman is on the open market. His handlers are pimping his talent to the baseball world. They should fetch a handsome return, as they rightly should.

People who have scouted Chapman, a 6-foot-4, 180 pounds of arms and legs, claim the man’s as good as any pitcher his age. He has a fastball that routinely hits 100 mph. It's the kind of velocity that should make him a top-of-the-rotation starter, a rare commodity in an era in which quality pitching has proved scarce. Teams never have too much of it.

A free agent like him comes at a high price. Already, the typical suspects have lined up to throw millions Chapman’s way.

The Yankees are interested; they’re interested in any player who can make them better. The Mets, the Angels and the Red Sox are interested, too. That means the paupers of baseball will be watching this auction of prime talent from the sidelines.

And here’s the loophole: Why isn’t Chapman in the June draft?

Baseball does its fans and its weaker franchises an injustice when it allows talent like Chapman to avoid the draft. But all players from Latin America and Cuba and Japan and Korea and Australia and China avoid it, which keeps clubs like the Royals, the Pirates, the Nationals, the Padres, the Indians, the Marlins, the Rays and the Indians, as well as a few others, from participating in high-stakes auctions.

The advantage goes to the Yankees and the Red Sox, who can afford to miss or overpay for a can’t-miss prospect no matter what he’s asking for his services.

No other sport gives rich teams such an advantage, and if you listen to what baseball officials say, the loophole can’t be closed. No way, they claim, can baseball hold a draft of international players. It would be too complicated, too costly and too unwieldy to work.

To believe what baseball officials and general managers say is to partner with the stupid. They have no more difficult a task in putting together a worldwide draft than hockey or basketball do. A good scout can find talent in the Arctic Circle, if boys are playing baseball there. If the player’s name is registered for the draft, someone will figure out if he can play -- or if he can’t.

The issue is: Should players like Chapman be free to peddle their talents without rules. If so, why? If they can, then why not let a Minor League player who can’t find his niche in one organization do likewise? Why keep him on a treadmill going nowhere?

A team with a deep farm system shouldn’t be allowed to hinder the progress of a ballplayer.

The concept of letting a franchise hold a player’s rights for more than a season might have outlived its purpose. In today’s world, a player in the Minor Leagues should be able to pursue free agency after each year. He should be allowed to do what Chapman will do: post a for-hire sign.

That will keep teams from stockpiling talent. It won’t, however, stop the Yankees and Red Sox from outbidding rivals for the CC Sabathias and the Manny Ramirezes, but even the Yankees and the Red Sox can’t find a place for all the young players in the game.

Those players will have to go elsewhere first, perhaps honing their baseball skills on the cheap in Kansas City or Pittsburgh or San Diego.

At least then, fans there will have a window for success, which is more than what they have now. For a talented player like Chapman, if he’s as good as people say he is, could give any of these teams hope, and I see hope as a good thing for people who have spent the past decade watching their favorite team dwell in the cellar.